The SOE office is going to see the Sony Picture movie Spider-Man 2 today. I'm expecting more than from Riddick. But my honest hope is that SpiderMan2 is a huge blockbuster that helps Sony Pictures make a lot of money...

A crazy weekend for sure. Starting with a picnic and music in the park for Sophia's work. Good food, good friends, and surprisingly good music. The 7th Day Buskers were playing at The Casbah Saturday but we saw them free at the Mission Hills Park.

Then today (Saturday) we went to the OB Street Fair to work the Fat Hats booth with some friends. We help kids paint paper bags and turn them into hats. We were right next to one of the stages and heard more good music. Didn't catch the band names though.

We came home and watched Six Degrees of Separation (1993). Reading about it later, it became obvious the movie was based on a play. In fact, the leading actress played this character for 3 years. Will Smith was in it. A good con man film. Not great. OK as I would say.

Finally, tomorrow we are going to the Del Mar Fair. We expect to eat lots of food and wander way too long, coming home exhausted. I don't suspect that we'll go see the 4H exhibits though.

We went to the zoo Sunday morning. It was a monkey and hooved animal day. We really like the orangutans and even more so now that our friend Rick is in southest Asia helping protect them. The Colobus (missing thumb monkeys) were sleeping. But we saw the one month old giraffe.

Sophia has found that the library has a good selection of DVDs. Last night we watched Gosford Park. This mystery/drama shows the lives of upstairs guest and downstairs servants at a shooting party in a country house in 1932 England. Sophia thought it was too much drama and not enough mystery. I thought it was too much upstairs stuffy folk and not enough downstairs. It has lots of fun twists and interesting characters. You'll never guess who's done it.

Sony Online took us to the movies on Friday. I don't want to complain because I appreciate the gesture. However, we saw The Chronicles of Riddick. Good -> great special effects. Everything else was mediocre. Vin Diesel looks big but that's about the extent of it. 'Nough said.

Thursday, June 17, 2004BOOK: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

If you notice the dark rings under my eyes you'll understand that I just spent a couple of days and late nights reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I was terribly slow at picking up the fifth book in the Rowling series. But I just couldn't wait until August for the paperback edition.

At 850 pages, it is a fine way to get to started on reading 10K pages in a year. If every book was as engrossing as this one, I might end up reading 50k pages. Sure, there will be some people that complain about the fantasy magic, the torture, the disobedient children at school, and whatever else "evil" they might notice. I think that anyone the same age as Harry (15?) would have been way overexposed to much worse on television, movies, music, or the internet. But reading it to your five year old is probably a little twisted -- but Lord of the Rings would be perfectly fine...

I really enjoy the cliff hanging chapters that make you want to read a few pages into the next one before stopping. And while Rowling may not win awards for great writing (although her books probably already have), I think her imagination and ability to capture the teenage spirit will allow this series to be remembered fondly by many generations of muggles wanting to be wizards.

Sophia and I watched two movies this weekend - Rudy and Waiting for Guffman. The first was predictable and not so much a sports movie as a motiviational film, not too strange given that the real-life Rudy is now a motiviational speaker. Back during the time of the film, he was a young man hoping to make the Notre Dame football team even though he isn't smart enough for Notre Dame nor athletic enough for any football team. But happy/feel good movies aren't so bad.

The second film was about community theater. I haven't done anything on stage since the 5th grade. But I could still relate to the cast of characters. Nothing was really laugh out loud funny but the underlying humor made me laugh out loud. I enjoyed it.

Sophia made a joke that Tai Chi that it sounded a lot like Chai Tea. Well, hopefully I won't spill the chai tea after taking tai chi.

Yesterday I started classes at the Jing Institute. It is located a couple of blocks from work. No excuses. And the best thing is that I can enjoy the exercise at the beach, while watching TV, or in my office.

I'm not sure how to define it. But I sense the real crunch has begun. Shipping is everything now. [STOP!]

Very strange week that was the antidote for crunch... Someone we knew lost her significant other of five years to a traffic accident. Life changing. Shipping a game seems trivial.

I hope to begin Tai Chi this week (Monday.) Pester me if I don't.

I hope to get a haircut this week. Sophia will pester me if I don't.

I'm starting the journey towards becoming an expert. Computer-human interaction. I want to be the one to explain to the world that programmers can be good UI designers. Teach them the skills. Tell management to give them the time and budget to design. I think I have an intuitive understanding of user interfaces. I think I just need to focus my extra (non-crunch/non-Sophia) energy reading and thinking about game usability.

Today there was hope for a Triple Crown winner. Smarty Pants (err Jones) was supposed to win the Belmont stakes to be the first 3peat since 1979. Birdstone had other intentions. And somehow I picked the horse with 34-1 odds to win. OK, just at a derby watching party. So I didn't win $70. But who's to complain?

Am I a Lakers fan? No. I'm just a sports fan that likes a good game. However, since the Lakers are the closest NBA team, I tend to root for them instead of the team they are playing. This Western finals was interesting -- Minnesota, the old home of the LA Lakers, was the theoretical favorite although I'm sure the odds in Vegas had them as underdogs. And I think they felt the pressure.

The NBA is extremely boring to watch. Thus TiVo is the answer. Fast forward through the first half except for the last 2 minutes of each quarter, fast forward through all the commercials and timeouts, fast forward through free throws, and potentially watch the entire game at 2x speed. But last night we watched it in real time at a party.